People are Complex:

Today especially as I struggle to not cast judgment I have to remember that all people are complex. Simplifying humans into categories is not only wrong, it doesn’t work. For example, we have had great presidents who did stupid things and believed crazy ideas. Jefferson had slaves and wrote passionately against that same practices. FDR championed civil rights and personal freedoms at the same time he was interning Japanese Americans. Wilson was an advocate for women’s suffrage but also openly racist.

We are all more complicated and contradictory than can be explained by checking boxes on a survey.

The student who absolutely drives you crazy and annoys the fungus out of you is also the one who so earnestly pulls on your heartstrings and makes you laugh.

Just because I disagree with, or distrust or dislike with someone does not mean that they are always wrong, or untrustworthy or unkind. It is more complicated than that.

Maybe this is a bad analogy, but… it’s like teaching. Teaching is not just laying out info and waiting for it to be sucked in. It’s more complicated than that.

So, as I go into the next 4 years I will be trying to remember that for better and worse we are long past the time of simple answers, in fact, that time may never have been. We are now in a time of complexity. Humans are not just inconsistent. We are, hypocritical, complicated, and illogical.